


no harm

by erebones



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Blood and Violence, F/F, Vignette, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 23:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11195955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: Baze Malbus, pirate captain of theStardust, saves the life of a strange sea-creature trapped in their nets. The Force provides.





	no harm

**Author's Note:**

> the first in what I envision being a little series about these two getting to know each other and falling in love. I'm a little late for Mermay, but the mermaid bug has bitten me anyway! greatly inspired (aesthetically speaking) by Black Sails, which I've been binge watching with elephantastic. <3

Shouts rouse Baze from her bed well before dawn bells. From overhead come pounding footsteps and cries of alarm; like a match, adrenaline floods her body and sends her jumping out of bed to fish for her clothes. _Attack_ is her first thought, though it seems unlikely--they’re sailing in fairly peaceful waters at the moment, at the fridges of the Alliance’s territories, and no enemy ship would be able to sneak up on them with Erso’s hawk-like eyes pinned to the horizon.

Then someone is pounding on her door, frantic, and their voice splinters through a moment later as she pulls her shirt over her head and winds her long hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.

“Captain! Captain, wake up, you’ve got to come and see this!”

“I’m awake, Rook,” she calls, heels clicking smartly as she goes to the door. “What’s going on?”

“One of the men—er, lads— _lasses_ —”

“‘One of the crew’ will suffice, Rook,” Baze sighs, ripping open the door. She's not in full regalia, but nothing short of a broadside attack by a Trandoshan frigate would convince her to be so at this hour. She tucks her shirt into her sash and grabs a shawl off the hook on the wall to guard against the predawn chill. “Show me.”

Up on deck, everything is chaos. Andor, her second mate, emerges from the knot of sailors with a haggard expression that abates only a little when he catches sight of her. He puts his fingers in his mouth and blows a piercing whistle. “Oy! Cap’n’s on deck, you scabs, now lay off!”

A hush falls like magic. But no one moves, except to turn in her direction and salute. Baze puts her hands on her hips and lifts her brows sky-high. “Well? What’s going on, then?”

It’s just about dawn now, she realizes _—_ the ruckus has kept them from their normal hourly duties. The sky is a pale fawn, lit up with the first rosy blush of dawn at the horizon’s fringes, and it touches everything with a gentle glow as the sails flap hollowly and the crew shuffle their feet.

Erso, at last, steps forward, lower lip stuck out stubbornly. “We caught something in the nets, Captain. Not sure what it is.”

Baze frowns. The trawler nets they put down at night pull up all sorts of things—fish, yes, and sea urchins, and the occasional crab, but also bizarre deep-sea animals, garbage, bits of flotsam and flimsy whose origins have been worn away by the relentless tide. Whatever it is they’ve pulled up this time must be a real strange one, to have everyone in uproar. She settles her shawl more snugly on her shoulders and flicks her fingers.

The crew stands aside.

The nets are in a disorderly heap on the deck, the sopping wet jetsam flung every which way. Not much fish in this haul—just a lonely little hermit crab clicking its pincers forlornly. And, in the center, a long, glistening green-black fish’s tail, the fins limp and semi-translucent, the occasional burnished golden scale gleaming in the early morning light. Baze follows the tail with her eyes—it’s incredibly long, seven feet at least, and at the end of it is a woman. Well, half a woman. Slim and golden-skinned, small-breasted, face hidden by a tangled web of long black hair.

Fascination wars with practicality, and the second wins out. Baze comes forward swiftly, as light-footed as she can, and crouches down at the creature’s side, reaching for the knife in her belt. It makes no move, is hardly even breathing—its chest rises and falls weakly, and along its sides, blood-red gills split open and shut again, like lips gasping for a last breath of air. Baze lays a hand on the net and slides her blade free.

Quicker than thought, the creature moves, and Baze cries out in surprise—its grip around her wrist is deathly cold and unforgiving. But as the crew surges forward, she waves them off, knife flashing in the sun.

“Get back! I said _get back_ , all of you.”

She throws the blade to the deck. Through strands of weed-like hair, the creatures stares at her, eyes like liquid ink. Lashes long as spun silk. There’s a shimmering hint of scales along the sparse arch of its brows. Spellbound, Baze licks her lips and shows her open palm.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Okay? I just want to help cut you loose.”

The creature regards her with a blank expression. Then its lips part, exposing pearl-white teeth and a mouth redder than a Jakku sunrise, and a sibilant, clicking sort of sound escapes. “Chirrut.”

Baze frowns. “Sorry?”

A long stream of rattling, guttural sounds spill out, but if it’s a language, it’s one Baze has never heard before. But, at the end of it, the same sound again: _chirrut_.

“Chirrut,” Baze echoes, because it’s the only sound she has any hope of mimicking correctly. The creature’s mouth splits into a wide grin. Or maybe she’s baring her teeth. It’s hard to tell. “Right. I’m going to… cut you loose, now. Okay?”

The creature, inexplicably, lets go of her arm.

“Right, move back, all of you. Go about your duties,” Andor says gruffly, chivvying the audience into action. The creature’s flat black eyes follow them, pointed incisors teasing the silky curve of her lower lip in warning. Only when the crew has been dispersed, leaving them relatively alone, do those teeth disappear.

Baze picks up the knife again. This time, there is no struggle; she cuts the nets rope by rope, mentally apologizing to whichever poor sod is going to have to make repairs later, until the long, oily gleam of the creature’s tail is loosened, fins ruffling in the breeze.

“There,” she says, sheathing the blade and hefting herself to her feet. The rail isn’t terribly high, just a little under the height of her upper thigh. She stands back from it and gestures. “Go on then. No harm, no foul.”

The creature licks her red lips with an even redder tongue--all mammalian, in spite of the fish’s tail, in spite of the glister of seafoam scales dappling her cheeks. Baze tightens her shawl around her shoulders and averts her gaze from the creature’s… chest area. The black strands of hair are long enough to preserve some of its modesty, but not all, and Baze is determined to be chivalrous.

“No harm,” the creature says suddenly, soft and a little disjointed, like a gramophone crackling stickily along the high notes of an operatic aria. “No foul. Captain.”

Her voice is like velvet. Like melting caramel. _Siren_ , says the warning tug of instinct in Baze’s gut, but she is not afraid.

“Baze Malbus,” she says crisply, chin high, eyes to the horizon. “Remember my name, if it please you. Perhaps our paths will cross again.”

The creature laughs, capricious and delighted, as if Baze has just told a wonderful joke. “Perhaps, perhaps,” she sighs, like the delicate rasp of waves dragging at beach-sand.

Then, in a sudden and magnificent display of strength, her tail coils powerfully and she propels herself off the side of the ship in a blur of greenish-black and gold. The water parts for her readily, like the thighs of a familiar lover--there is no splash, hardly even a ripple to mark where she disappeared. Baze clings to the rail and looks over after her, breathless. But apart from the slightest trail of bubbles winding down into the black depths, there is nothing. Not even a hint of mercurial, waterlogged laughter to remember her by.

///

Baze runs a tight ship, for a pirate vessel. Some have accused her of being no better than an Imperial navy captain. Baze isn’t concerned. Those who work hard and adapt to her methods do well on the _Stardust_. Those who mouth off and shirk their duties get the long end of the gangplank and a sad swim to the nearest shore.

What she does not expect is outright mutiny.

The last Imperial merchant vessel they ran afoul of was easy pickings: Rook knew its weaknesses, how to exploit the angle of the breeze to run her aground. Baze dispatched people to take care of the crew, and saw to the throat of the captain herself, opening it in a crimson spill of blood in front of God and everyone before pitching the carcass over the side. The sharks fed well that night.

She makes it a habit to recruit who she can. Rook was one such success: the quiet, sharp-eyed bosun of a fat-bellied merchant galleon, he had proved himself quickly as a reliable member of her crew, eventually advancing to quartermaster. She considers herself a decent judge of character, and she’s always willing to give defectors a second chance. She hasn’t had a single man or woman turn afoul of her in all her years of piracy.

Until Krennic. He’s a wily one. Good at bowing and scraping, good at playing the fragile, nervous wreck. Rook is dubious, but he trusts her judgement. It is her downfall.

He plants his seeds. Picks the moment. A storm is coming down from the north, whipped up by the treacherous winds of the Yavin Quadrangle and sent south--the skies are dark as pitch, their sails like full moons as they try to outrace the leading edges of its wrath. Krennic challenges her decision to flee. Claims they should turn east and find safe harbor in the Imperial-controlled Dagobah Islands. Dangerous, yes, he admits, but better to face a foe they can fight than the unrelenting chokehold of Mother Nature’s hand.

The crew is divided. Baze relents. The outer fringes of the reefs are unpatrolled at this time of year; perhaps, if they are lucky, they can slip in under the cover of the storm and slip out again with none the wiser.

They sail straight into a trap. By the time Baze gives the order to roll out the guns, they’re already flanked, a swift-sailing Imperial gunship on either side. Rain lashes the deck in torrents, now, soaking them all to the skin; Baze seizes Krennic by the throat as lightning flashes overhead, silhouetting them in the moment of surrender. Even as Rook runs up a white flag, Baze guts Krennic with the pitted blade of her trusty knife, tosses him over the side in a spray of blood. She can feel it sticking to her cheeks, running pink with rain through the unsoiled fabric of her white shirt.

Someone, somewhere, fires a musket. At the peak of her fury, Baze rocks back on her heels, scrabbling for purchase on the slick deck. Her shoulder is on _fire_. Through the rain she glimpses Rook’s haggard, bone-bleached face, white with shock beneath his beard. Then darkness swallows her up, and she’s falling, down, down, over the side. The water meets her head like hard-packed sand, and she knows no more.

///

Her mouth is dry as cotton. Under her cheek, her hands, she feels the wet grit of volcanic sand, dark and coarse like the jagged rime of salt clinging to the rigging.

By increments, Baze blinks awake. There is no sound of the heaving ocean, which is disconcerting; but there _is_ a hollow lapping sound, like water against the inner belly of her ship, which is a small comfort. She gets her elbows under her and rolls onto her back.

A cave. She’s inside a cave. The vaulted roof erects itself in layered tiers of shale to a crumbling hole at the top that admits a single, transcendent beam of daylight. Within the cave is a small harbor, and fringing that harbor is a beach, grey and gently-sloped into the dark water. There is no evidence of any entry point--either the tide is high, or some strange force of nature washed her through an underwater passage and birthed her here upon the sand.

The surface of the water riffles in warning, but Baze doesn’t have the energy to back away as the next few wavelets crest and foam into something bigger. She need not have feared; a woman slips up onto the beach on her belly, not seeming to notice the coarse sand in spite of her nakedness. Her skin is semi-translucent, gold washed pale by the thin daylight and the shadows, her hair a long, dark tangle over her chest and down her back, braided through with strands of kelp and coral fronds. Baze is not superstitious, but she’s seen enough in her years of sailing to know that this is no ordinary woman, although she walks smoothly across the beach on two long, shapely legs.

Then the woman drops to her knees at Baze’s side, and Baze recognizes her--the plump red of her lips, the dark, feral eyes. And the woman knows _her_.

“Captain Baze Mahhlbus,” she pronounces, enunciating each vowel with a velvety pressure in the back of her throat. “You remember?”

Baze stares at her frighteningly white teeth, the sharp incisors, and nods once. “I remember. Chirrut.”

“A life for a life, Captain.” She dips her chin and holds out her hand. A large shell, neatly carved, with a perfectly-fitting lid made of wood. Baze fumbles for the latch and stares within.

Fresh water. She dips a finger in and brings it to her tongue, and nearly weeps with relief. “Thank you. Thank you, I cannot repay—”

“No harm,” the sea-maid interrupts, smiling. “No foul. Drink. Your time is not today.”

**Author's Note:**

> series title comes from the song by lord huron


End file.
